41–50 of 119 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a great point. Are there any 64 bit ARM chips on the horizon? I don't know much about chips, so maybe it's not even possible given the architecture.
It's possible, but just like the x86-64 transition it won't be pretty.
What portion of x86 transistors are dedicated to supporting the bad instruction set design?
[1] http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1039523 around 1/3 of the way in
I think the largest hurdle for ARM to get over is the preponderance of Windows installations with kernels only complied for x86. Linux and OS X (Mach) already run on ARM, and I think that possibly the NT kernel runs on ARM (Windows phone 7 is ARM, right?) I have trouble seeing Microsoft port over Windows proper to ARM until there's a really strong market for it. That being said, perhaps low power consumption ARM devi…
Is ARM's power advantage really that significant for devices larger than the smart phone / tablet form factor? If an Atom-based CPU consumes ~2-3 extra watts but offers marginally better performance and (more importantly) compatibility with an enormous base of existing applications, that doesn't seem like a very compelling argument for switching.
Think of a data center situation though where you can get a ~50% power requirement difference for marginal performance decreases. The cost savings would be huge even if you require more servers to make up for the performance difference. For most home users I think you're right for now but for businesses it could be huge.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If we compare the RISC nature of ARM with the CISC-implemented-over-RISC approach of contemporary x86s, it's easy to believe it will prove simpler to upscale ARM than to downscale the Atom. Transmeta-style emulation could be one possible way out of this death spiral for Intel.
History has shown that intel is very good at getting out of potential death spirals...
All factors, Windows compatibility excepted, are on ARM's side this time. Of course Intel has survived bad situations before, but this time I am not betting on them.
The tagline from Innovator's Dilemma is that well-managed companies can get into trouble when they are being disrupted. The reason is that it's normally good business to get rid of low-margin products and focus your resources on the ones that make the most money. And then someone takes over the low end and expands into the high end. But Intel is not falling for that one. They have made the Atom, a slow, cheap, low-po…
I think the largest hurdle for ARM to get over is the preponderance of Windows installations with kernels only complied for x86. Linux and OS X (Mach) already run on ARM, and I think that possibly the NT kernel runs on ARM (Windows phone 7 is ARM, right?) I have trouble seeing Microsoft port over Windows proper to ARM until there's a really strong market for it. That being said, perhaps low power consumption ARM devi…
Didn't OSX just recently get rid of ARM support? Might be wrong though..
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If we compare the RISC nature of ARM with the CISC-implemented-over-RISC approach of contemporary x86s, it's easy to believe it will prove simpler to upscale ARM than to downscale the Atom. Transmeta-style emulation could be one possible way out of this death spiral for Intel.
History has shown that intel is very good at getting out of potential death spirals...
This time however, they need to change the whole platform, because the whole platform brings much bigger inefficiencies than ARM, and they won't be able to improve down that much, while ARM will improve fast at a steady pace.
The only solution is to buy a big ARM maker. To have a chance to dominate, they'd need to buy Qualcomm for Snapdragon, but they've just wasted 7 billion on an anti-virus...
But even if they do that, I'm unsure of their potential domination, as I believe in 2011 Nvidia will dominate the mobile market with its Tegra chips. That's because in 2011 the battle will be over who has the best GPU not CPU. The GPU is increasingly more important (accelerating the UI, the browser, Flash, supporting higher resolutions, gaming, etc)
Is ARM's power advantage really that significant for devices larger than the smart phone / tablet form factor? If an Atom-based CPU consumes ~2-3 extra watts but offers marginally better performance and (more importantly) compatibility with an enormous base of existing applications, that doesn't seem like a very compelling argument for switching.
Except that the Atoms at same (and even a bit higher) clock don't even offer marginally better performance. And another thing that I came to think of that weighs heavily in ARM's favor is the multitude of composite, multifunctional chips, SoCs etc. currently available in the ARM flavor. Is there ANYTHING like this for Atom, or any x86 at all?
Depends if we are talking Arm Cortex-A8 or Cortex-A9. Atom is much more powerful at same clock speed that Cortex-A8. Cortex-A9 is getting closer competitive, but doesn't have much of a power advantage over it. (Lies, damn lies and benchmarks, but A8 gets ~2000 MIPS, A9 ~2500 MIPS and singlecore 1st gen Atom gets ~3300 MIPS)
Also, multicore-Atom has been in the market for a while. Multicore ARM is just coming online now.
It's worth noting that Intel can speed up Atom whenever they want. There are plenty of easy wins in there (eg, better execution core, faster memory controller) that they can put in if they need to keep their lead.